


Shane the Destroyer

by extremelyperturbed



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Comedy, Gen, Science, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 08:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14052720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extremelyperturbed/pseuds/extremelyperturbed
Summary: A theory ficlet or Shane's not a demon.  He's a product of evolution.





	Shane the Destroyer

"What are you reading now?" said Ryan as he drove them to the next reputedly haunted location, The Stanley Hotel, from the airport.

"Just an article about how everybody with blue eyes got it from a single ancestor. More than ten thousand years ago, blue eyes didn't exist," said Shane, looking at his phone. 

"Huh," said Ryan. "So what happened?"

"There was a mutation that actually switched off the melanin to the irises, leaving them blue. Everybody with blue eyes has the same gene change. That's how they know it's fairly recent and came from one source."

"If only one person had it, how did it spread among so many people?"

"It must have conferred some kind of evolutionary advantage. It's a bit like how people became paler in northern countries so they would be able to produce more vitamin D while people in hotter, sunnier climates would retain their melanin to avoid skin cancer and sunburn."

"Blue eyes produce vitamin D?"

"No, I'm just giving you an example of how a population can change over time due to mutations actually being beneficial. I don't think it's been figured out yet. Once you get a lot of kids with blue eyes in the village, it becomes normalized."

"I'm surprised when the first blue eyed kid popped out that they didn't immediately go 'Witch, witch' or 'demon, demon.'"

"They might have. You never know."

"I get how people get different colored eyes or skin but how the hell do animals become poisonous or venomous?"

"I'm not sure I completely understand but it seems for snakes, some of the genes controlling saliva glands and other tissues become the basis for the venom glands. As for the actual venom, it probably didn't start out as toxic as it is now but as the prey became more resistant with each surviving generation, it becomes a kind of arms race."

"Hmm."

"What's going on in that noggin of yours?" said Shane. 

"You often tell me that you think magic and ghosts are bullshit because people don't seem as affected by them like they used to be."

"Yeah, that's right. It shows that as technology, rationality and science has advanced, all these previous claims have been shown to be bunk."

"I was thinking that maybe people have become more resistant to them. All it would take is one person with some kind of anti-magic aura in their genes. They'd have a natural advantage over the other people because ghosts would prefer to pester other people and the people with the lucky mutation would have more kids on average and it would spread like blue eyes."

"Auras don't exist. That's New Age crystal nonsense."

"Whatever the quality happens to be. Maybe it's resistance to possession."

"Go on."

"It would explain why the spirit box really picks up around me and shuts down around you, especially when we're in different rooms."

Shane frowned. "So since I'm the skeptic, I'm somehow poisoning ghosts into staying the hell away from me because I'm genetically programmed to ooze anti-ghost magic."

"Something like that. If venoms are a riff on enzymes the animal already has then maybe there's a riff on magical ability our species has."

"You're basically blaming me for why you can't find ghosts. Yes, I am Shane the Destroyer, the X-men annihilator of all spooks. Also humans aren't magic. David Blane can not turn you into a frog." Irritated, Shane said, "Furthermore, we're going to walk in there, spend the night and absolutely nothing is going to happen because there are no ghosts!"

***  
"Son of a bitch!" said a ghost as it tried to enter the room where Shane was snoring away on one of the beds while Ryan was talking to his girlfriend on the phone, seeking moral support. Part of its protoplasm promptly disintegrated. 

"Don't go in there, dumb ass!" said another ghost. "He's one of those!"

"So what do we do now?"

"We leave them alone! We'll scare someone else!"

The End

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.livescience.com/9578-common-ancestor-blue-eyes.html is about one common ancestor theory regarding blue eyes
> 
> https://www.nasw.org/article/vitamin-d-levels-determined-how-human-skin-color-evolved is about the role of Vitamin D regarding skin color
> 
> http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/09/on-the-origin-of-venom/ talks about the origin of venom:
> 
> "Venoms did not pop out of the void. They started out as genes for other functions. Venom genes are closely related to other genes that carry out entirely different jobs, both in venomous animals and non-venomous ones. Some venoms are closely related to immune system proteins, for example, which attack bacteria invading the body. Others are closely related to digestive enzymes."
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_snake_venom


End file.
